Meet the Mother
by Midoriko-sama
Summary: Have you ever wondered just WHY Kagome's mother took the whole demon-slaying, going-into-the-past, spending-your-time-with-a-gruff-dog-demon-affair so easily and calmly? Well, I did wonder, and here's the result.


Meeting the Mother 

_By Midoriko-sama_

_August 27th _

"Mamma? Why do you clean here if we never use it?" asked a tiny Kagome, hanging onto her mother's skirt as the older woman swept the dusty floor around the well. Her wood polish were sitting on the third stair from the bottom, where her little girl was supposed to have been. But Kagome was too restless and curious and happy to sit in one place too long. Sometimes Kyoko wondered how she managed at school, but then her daughter loved books and reading.

Ever since little Souta had come, Kagome hadn't had much attention. Now, Grandpa had started his cleaning of the shrine grounds, seeing that the winter season would soon be at the doors, and the rain needed to find free courses to flow away through. The dry summer had clogged most of them with the tourist's papers and rubbish.

Kagome also had a rag in hand and was polishing the well lip she nearly didn't reach up to. Already at such a young age, her little girl was already responsible and eager to help. Her mother smiled upon her fondly.

"Mamma?" she asked promptly "Can you lift me to do the well top? I can't reach the far end"

"No dear, mamma will do that later." She replied. She could see her daughter pout at her "Why don't you try going around and polishing another flank Kagome-chan? Jii-chan will soon call us to help flatten the leaves, and you can jump in them all you like"

Kagome's face brightened instantly. She scuffled around and started trying to scrub at the mould on the wood. After a while, she stopped, turned to her mother again, and said "Will Souta-chan be able to jump on the leaves with me mamma?"

Kyoko gave a laugh

"No Kagome-chan, Souta-chan is still a little baby, in fact I think even if he were to jump onto the leaves his weight wouldn't break them. But I think he would like some of the hot potatoes we'll make after, don't you think? Will you help me mash them up for baby Souta?"

"Of course mamma! But can I have some too?"

"Of course honey! You'll have as many as you always had dear" her mother laughed in response. 

Both woman and child kept at their work silently for some more time. Kyoko moved some of the boxes they stored at the far end of the shrine and swept around them, noticing some wet patches where the light summer rain there had been a few days before had leaked in. She's have to tell Jii-chan, and they'd have to make the repairs together, since her husband . . . She sighed and went on with her work, finally moving to the cleaning of the well itself. Her daughter was still scrubbing diligently at the same flank, and Kyoko smiled brightly at her before descending into its heart. On her way down she stopped to scrub at each rung, trying to take as much rust as she could off it. When she was at the bottom of the well, however, she realised that her cloth was now unusable, and that she needed the wooden polish which she had left behind

"Kagome-chan? Can you hand me the clean cloth and the wooden polish you're using please?" she called up to her daughter.

"Ok mamma!" came her daughter's little voice from above her. Kyoko busied herself cleaning the last few rungs while she was at it, and therefore did not notice what her little girl was doing until she called her excitedly

"Mamma!" 

Kyoko looked up, and was soon horrified to find Kagome balanced on the lip of the well looking proud of herself with the cloth in one hand and the polish in the other.

"Kagome! How did you get up there!" asked her mother in startle 

"I climbed on the lid mamma! I made it up" she smiled, and jumped up excitedly. Little Kagome however didn't really know how to land yet, and her lacquered booties slipped on the thin rim. With a little scream she feel forward, and her mother beneath gave a cry and readied herself to catch her little girl in fear. Kagome rolled while she came down, nearly hitting her head against the rungs, and landed on Mrs Higurashi head first.

The older woman was pushed back by her daughter's weight, and closed her eyes both in relief of having her Kagome safe (albeit upside down) and both with the expectation of feeling her head and back hit the side of the well's limited space. 

Her head and shoulders hit the well inside as she had expected, but not as painfully as she had wagered. The wood seems softer than she thought it would be, and damp. Kyoko opened her eyes, to find that the bottom of the well was muddy, and that there was sunlight covering one flank of the top part. She blinked not a few times to see the sky above her. What on earth did this mean? She rubbed her head, thinking that maybe she had been effected by the fall, although the thought made her laugh, and started looking around for the rungs. Kagome-chan seemed to be unconscious, and after checking her head for welts and finding none, Kyoko thought it was maybe safer to take her to her father and have him see her.

But the rungs seemed to be missing. Kyoko now really began to worry about her own sanity, and began trying to call her father, but no one answered. Kagome seemed peacefully asleep, and Kyoko thought it was better, since she wouldn't have to explain their strange situations to her little girl and frighten her. However, that also meant that Kyoko would have to carry her up, and the only way up seemed to be the vines.

As she looked around, a shadow suddenly cast over the sunlight coming into the well. Kyoko looked up, hugging Kagome to herself, expecting to see her father, but there was a strange looking man looking down at her instead.

"Ay Lady, she is here as you said" he called to someone next to him.

"Then help her up, come now, she and the child must be frightened. Come now, be quick" replied the voice of a female from above. Kyoko pressed herself and her child against the wall of the well as men began coming into view at the well top, strange looking mad with rough accents and dirty clothes and paces, and she could hear a hammer falling repeatedly onto something. Finally a rope was cast down, and a man began to descended. Kyoko pushed as far as she could go in the little space she had as the man landed.

"Don't be afraid lady, we won't hurt you or your precious child. She is as vital to us as she is to you" said a soft female voice she hadn't hear yet from the well top. Kyoko looked up too see a rather old woman smiling back down at her, her hair, still holding flakes of black, looking very white against the darkness of the well insides. Kyoko looked at her for a few seconds before looking at the rough man in front of her, who was also smiling benignly. She really had no other choice, and she needed to get herself out of the well, so she carefully stepped up to the man, who tied the rope around her waist, and then took Kagome from her arm, although she made to protest.

"Don't worry lady, her weight will make it impossible for you to be pulled up in that way" said the first feminine voice that Kyoko had heard. As she was hauled up, she saw that there were indeed two women by the well. The rope pressed her jeans and dug into her skin, but Kyoko was no sooner released that she moved to the edge of the well, too see the man tie a sort of wicker cradle by which they brought Kagome up. Kyoko took her daughter in her arms at once. Through the whole ordeal Kagome had remained asleep.

"You may leave us" said one of the women, the one with one eye covered in a black patch "Return to your patrol around the village" all of them bowed to her and left. Kyoko clutched the little sleeping girl to herself as she took in both women dressed in the same style of clothing her father dressed in as a shrine priest.

And the woods . . the house and the shrine were gone, there were only trees and shrubbery everywhere. The breeze whistled through the grass under her feet. She still held her cloth tightly in hand.

"We were awaiting you" said the older looking woman of the pair. Kyoko looked at her, and noticed that her kimono was much finer than the ones of the villagers, or of the woman beside her, had been.

"How did you . . where am I?" asked the bewildered woman.

"Follow me" replied the other, dressed like a miko, instead of answering. Both women starter walking away, and Kyoko had no choice but to follow, afraid of being left alone in a place she did not understand with her child in her arms.

They took her away from the clearing where the well was, and as they moved around the trees and roots, Kyoko recognised a particular in the landscape that was hard to miss. The Goshinboku. 

The miko helped the older over some tree roots, and then they parted the shrubbery for her.

Kyoko stared, looking in a rather shocked and arrested manner, at the creature that stood before her. The woman in the kimono clambered cautiously up one of the branches and snapped off a vine sapling that was growing to cover the creature's face. 

"Only the vines around his torso and legs have been allowed to grow, and the vines themselves have been planted by that same woman." Said the Miko that was still standing beside her.

"This is my son, dear lady" said the old one up beside the white haired man in the vines. Kyoko gaped at the impossibility of it all. She HAD hit her head too hard it seemed. "This is my son Inuyasha"

Kyoko looked at her again, and now she was amazed at how delicately the woman brushed the boy's hair aside, at how she ran her withered hands through his fringe. Movements she recognised herself as a mother. She had often done it to Kagome to sooth her in sleep, and now Souta too. Kagome stirred in her arms

"What happened to my daughter?" she asked, looking first at the woman by the boy and then at the miko beside her. 

"She is but sleeping" said the Miko "Lady Hakami has put a sleeping spell on her. She must not know this place, even in memory. We are not here to change the future, but to make it easier, on them"

"Them?" asked Kyoko, hugging her daughter to herself. Hakami beckoned the other mother to join her on the top most vine beside the boy, where she had now seated herself. The miko helped her climb without the use of her hands and then sat at the foot of the same vine, looking up at them through her one eye.

"This is my son, Inuyasha" Hakami repeated "I am his mother Hakami of the Musashi domain. His father was the demon lord of the West lands."

Demons? Spells? This was getting out of hand

"I know you come from a land where such a thing as demons are not of daily speech, where indeed . . you don't believe in them, and their existence . . am I right?" said the old woman again. Kyoko gaped and then pulled Kagome towards her. The miko beneath looked at her in wonder

"How do you know that?" Kyoko finally admitted

"I . . am a Miko, much like Kaede over yonder" she said, smiling down to the other old woman.

"Why have you brought me here? Where am I?" asked the mother, trying to keep calm in the absurd situation. This was incredible, she MUST have hit her head and be in the middle of a dream

"I have not brought you here, but fate has" replied Hakami "Or in a way, I can say that it is your little girl that has brought you here"

"Kagome?" asked Kyoko in wonder

"Was it not when she came in that you came here? You have descended that well before I presume, as you were cleaning it" she smiled at the cloth "But you had never taken your daughter with you to the bottom"

"Kagome-chan fell in" said Kyoko in bewilderment "How do you know all that?"

"I saw it, in a dream. I came here when I dreamt my son was killed, and I indeed found him like this." Hakami touched his bare feet in sorrow.

"Is he dead?" asked Kyoko in shock, noticing the arrow in his chest for the first time. She quickly looked back at the other woman, who looked heart broken

"He is not dead lady" said Kaede, the priestess who stood lower down to them "But he is dead to her". Kyoko looked at her quizzingly

"This is reason we have come to greet you today, and perhaps the reason why fate has granted us a way to make their ways easy" sighed Hakami

"Inuyasha is a hanyou lady" said Kaede from below "He is a Half-Youkai. My sister was a Miko like me, but my sister's powers as a priestess greatly exceeded mine own. She was extremely powerful"

"My son loved her" said Hakami painfully, looking up at his sleeping face. Kyoko's face filled with pain at the look Hakami had on her face. A mother recognised a mother's suffering.

"My sister Kikyou did seem to love him back" sighed Kaede "But I do not know what happened between them. Inuyasha had come here originally for what my sister guarded, a jewel, that given to demons and creatures like Inuyasha would have increased their strength and power" Kaede shook her head. "But my sister had calmed him, tamed him to an extent. Until he came into the village one morning, and attacked. We had been growing used to his constant presence, and he had even helped in building some of the recent huts. When he attacked us that morning, we were not prepared."

Kaede looked up at him

"I was young. I was barely older that the child you carry" she went on, looking up at Inuyasha again "I was foolish. I got in his way on the way to the shrine hiding the jewel, and he could have killed me. But he only threw me away. I hit one of the huts and it lost me an eye" Kyoko looked up the sleeping boy in shock "He was weeping, lady."

"Inuyasha never wept, even when he left me to find his road. When Kaede told me that when I first came here, I knew something had gone amiss" sighed Hakami

"My sister stopped him, but she swore that her wound had been inflicted by him." Said Kaede staring hard at his arrow. 

"What have . . me and my daughter got to do with all this?" asked Kyoko

"All . . and nothing" murmured the other mother. She turned to Kyoko "The child you hold in your hands . . . I have had other dreams. I saw my son die before he did. I saw you coming here summers ago. I see my own end . ." she trailed off looking up at her son again "coming before he can wake and redeem himself. We, me and Kaede and her village, have protected Inuyasha's body from all and all that have tried to desecrate it. And Kaede shall continue to do it until your daughter  . . releases him"

"My Kagome? How does she come into it? I won't let you put her in danger" Kyoko cried, trying to rise to her feet. Hakami grabbed her jeans

"Listen to me please. I have seen it, it will occur, whether you shall want it . . or not. There is no way to stop destiny, as there was no way for me to save my son from weeping, or for me to stop my own death" Kyoko was forced to sit down by the strength of her words. Her grip was very fragile.

"It shall happen, what ever me and you may do" she said again, looking up at her son again "All you can do, Lady Kyoko, is make it harder or gentler for them" she smoothened the red robes her son was wearing delicately "When your daughter will count her day of birth for the fifteenth time, when Kagome will become a woman by our measure here, on that very day, she will return here. She shall be attacked be a demon, and my son will save her after she has released him"

Kaede sighed

"It is important that you keep your daughter away from the well before then. That well is the means by which she shall travel here to Edo" continued Hakami

"Edo?" echoed Kyoko "That is what Tokyo was called in the Sengoku Jidai" Hakami smiled at her as her eyes widened "We have travelled . .time?". Hakami nodded.

"I do not know what came to pass between my son and Kaede's sister, but I know it is not once that I have seen my son weep Lady Kyoko, not even in his infancy. Only once, in his birth." 

"Your daughter is the reincarnation of my sister" said Keade in a murmur "Fate shalt give them one last chance at being united. The rest is in their hands"

"You know my name" said Kyoko absently, looking from her sleeping daughter to the fully gown boy and back "Won't he age?"

"He has been thus forty years, lady" said Kaede "and since Lady Hakami's dreams have thence always been true, he has yet another ten before his eyes shalt open again"

"He is . . so young" said the older woman "I was the age your daughter shall be when she meets him, Lady Kyoko, when I gave birth to Inuyasha. Now I have seen seventy three summers. My son was but of eighteen summers when that arrow hit him lady Kyoko. He is but a child. More so to the demons." She looked up at him wistfully.

"My daughter . . is my daughter a miko too?" asked Kyoko fearfully, looking up at the demon her daughter would free. He would save her from a demon, Hakami had said, but had taken the life of her previous incarnation, and had taken an eye away from Kaede. Although . . he had been weeping. And then the same priestess had killed him to that tree. Kyoko shook her head. He looked so peaceful . . he had even helped them in village chores . . . something terrible must have occurred between him and the priestess, that was certain.

"Hai lady Kyoko" Hakami answered her "And her powers exceed even Kikyou's." Hakami shook her head "That woman shall return, in a form that isn't human, and torment them both. But Kagome is who Inuyasha was made for. His relation with Kikyou was too unstable, too insecure from both of them, too new. With Kagome, my son shall bond instantly. Albeit the first approach" she smiled to herself.

"Do you agree to help us lady?" asked Keade from below them "I myself do not know all that shall occur, and I shall forget most of what has trespassed here through a spell Lady Hakami has placed on me. But you, lady, can prevent your daughter from coming through the well after she will be brought here the second time. Your daughter shalt come all the same lady"

"My son will come for her in your time. The well shall let him through" smiled Hakami, as though reliving a memory "But it is true, your daughter is after all in your hands and power. You can make it more easy for them by sustaining her coming here to meet my son, or you can stop her from coming, thus making it more difficult that the wrongs be righted"

Kyoko looked down at her daughter. She was still sleeping. She was still five years old. She looked up at Inuyasha, already a man, but asleep too, probably . . probably wronged and hurt, deeper than the arrow. She looked at Kaede, who had an eye missing. Then she looked at Hakami, weary and tired but still with love for her son in her eyes. If Kaede, who had lost an eye and a sister . . . had decided to trust Hakami, this woman that was so much older than her, and older than Kyoko, if she had known that Kyoko and her girl would fall in that well, and had made it possible for them to be saved . . .

Kyoko looked down at the vine she sat on. It really seemed that fate had given a chance to the mothers to meet, to talk. From the way Hakami talked, Kyoko understood beyond doubt that this young man was her daughter's future. And that her daughter would be happy in this future, because it had been written for her to be with him even in her previous life.

Kyoko looked at Kagome shift in her arms, snuggle deeper into her embrace.

"May I hold her lady Kyoko? At least once?" Hakami suddenly asked her. Kyoko looked up at her pleading expression, and her outstretched arms. Would she trust this woman? With her daughter's present, past and future? Could she trust her? She looked into Hakami's eyes and recognised the eyes of a mother. Eyes like her own.

Kyoko gave the sleeping Kagome to Hakami.

There was a light breeze as the older woman rocked her, held her close, touched her hair. Kyoko was impressed at her love and care for a child that was not her own.

"Take care of him for me Kagome" she said at last, giving her a grandmotherly kiss on the forehead. Kagome smiled in her sleep. Kyoko's heart clenched, thinking of herself in Hakami's place and recognising her pain again.

Kagome took her daughter back to her chest and Hakami stood, holding onto her son to do so. Kyoko stood with her, and they both regarded Inuyasha silently for a few seconds.

"He shall look to you as a mother when Kagome will bring him to you. I beg you, lady Kyoko, do not look at him as a demon, but as the child he is. He will never hurt you or your daughter. It is not in his heart to do it. His heart is half-youkai. Half-youkai are different . . ." she once again trailed a hand through his hair.

As Kyoko followed the two older women away from the tree, and back to the well, she turned around before the shrubbery hid him from her. Kyoko's eyes trailed the lines his mother had made in his hair, and rested on those dog ears that she had noted through his mother's ministrations. Had Kagome not been in her hands, Kyoko wouldn't have resisted the urge to touch them. She didn't know how his mother would react to that either.

Kyoko smiled

"I'll leave that . . till next time, Inuyasha" she said in a whisper, then turned to follow them away.

*************

She watched through the window as Kagome, now fifteen, entered the well shrine after ten years. Both her children had been forbidden in there since Kagome had fallen in and she 'didn't want them to hurt'.

She waited for a few minutes, until Souta came screaming out saying that a huge woman-insect had dragged her into the well and disappeared. Today her duty of mother to a miko would start.

Hakami's words kept floating back and forth across her mind, and the image of a sleeping Inuyasha wouldn't leave her. He would save her from what had taken her, she trusted Hakami. She wished she could have seen Inuyasha's mother at least one other time.

"Don't worry Hakami, I'll help them through" she whispered towards the well shrine "In the meantime, take care of my daughter, Inuyasha"

End

Waaa!! I love this story!! Sigh, it feels like Kagome has the approval of her mother to love Inuyasha, which I think she does even in the manga. Oh well, at least this explains why Kagome's mother took the whole affair so lightly. At least, I think it's good enough to explain it, or be one version of explanation. It did always make me wonder . . .

Oh well, please drop me a line!


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